A track-by-track guide to new Manic Street Preachers album ‘Critical Thinking’

Nicky Wire

This is a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self (the exception being the three lyrics by James Dean Bradfield which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs).

The music is energised and at times euphoric. Recording could sometimes be sporadic and isolated, at other times we played live in a band setting, again the opposites making sense with each other.

There are crises at the heart of these songs. They are microcosms of meaninglessness in a world so brutal and divided, at an age when so many different kind of failures have been witnessed. What is the point in a song – thus the shift towards the internal. Start with yourself, maybe the rest will come.

The artwork for the album is by the world renowned Magnum photographer David Hurn. It evokes these feelings of uncertainty doubt and desire. 15 studio albums in, perhaps it should be like this. We’ve covered a lot of ground, the lines on the cover don’t quite connect, mirroring our current dilemma.

1. Critical Thinking
An address to the self and wider culture – a challenge to the cliched naivety of ‘Be Kind’ culture + the cults of mindfulness and wellness – dripping with sarcasm and rejection. Also a call for realism and a warning to keep your perspective sharp and in focus – question before you accept. The sound is jagged and awkward – echoes of post punk touchstones P.i.L., Gang of Four, Shriekback and the tonal cadence of The Whipping Boy. When it was written, I’d been reading The Handover by David Runciman and The New Leviathans by John Gray, realising how willing we can be to give so much of ourselves away – how gullible the human race is.

2. Decline and Fall
Using the past to push into the future – Richard Jobson’s dancing and The Associates’ glitter ball on Top of the Pops. Lyrical themes of inertia and collapse as the music propels you on and on – hyper-capitalism, digital malaise, managed decline. Trust + joy to be found in the tiny miracles that remain ‘dry stone walls’ + the comfort of the familiar.

3. Brushstrokes of Reunion
Nods to imperial-era Waterboys, particularly the love and desperation of Rags – R.E.M. Life’s Rich Pageant meets classic Manics crunch + velocity. Lyrically, about the hypnotic quality of a painting that’s inherited from someone who has passed.

4. Hiding in Plain Sight
Anne Sexton’s line ‘I am a collection of dismantled almosts’ really resonated and was the spark for the song – the lyrics and the music flowed and I’d written the whole thing in an hour. The song unfolds in 3 acts – a facing the mirror moment – an admission of self hatred – a forlorn act of nostalgic resistance. Layer upon layer of longing. The Only Ones, Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), Kirsty MacColl / Mazzy Star backing vocals. A song in love with its own sense of regret.

5. People Ruin Paintings
The narcissism of adventurers + explorers, the hypocrisy of the carbon footprint – the empty evangelism of the television travel show drenched in a cynical inverted nihilism. Man’s insatiable addiction to discover and use. The gentle lilt of 10,000 Maniacs. Musically the three of us playing telepathically, referencing thirty plus years of playing together instinctively.

6. Dear Stephen
A song triggered by a postcard sent to me by Morrissey in 1984 wishing that I ‘get well soon’ – a song torn between opposites – an elegy to forgiveness and how tactile objects still have the power to comfort + soothe – an examination of my own shortcomings as seen through my love of The Smiths mirrored by shimmering guitars and a rhythm section in complete harmony. Rattlesnakes-era Lloyd Cole, the tenderness of the Pretenders.

7. (Was I) Being Baptised
Written about a day spent in the company of Allen Toussaint, being inspired by his patience, eloquence and natural skill as a storyteller. A meditation on quiet dignity + resistance. Written with a nod to the yearning spiritual, flowing with the gentle ease + grace of the Weather Prophets. The motif at the start of the song is a nod to the intro of Glen Campbell’s Southern Nights, written by Toussaint.

8. My Brave Friend
A declaration of remembrance, a hymn to friendship + loss, an old troubled song brought back to life by sorrow + memory. Scott Walker No Regrets, Bryan Ferry Jealous Guy.

9. Out of Time Revival
A song about the fruitless search for answers and optimism and looking for them in all the wrong places. Putting too much pressure on memories + cultural signposts and trying to distil everything down to something more pragmatic. Inspired by the rhythm track of When Doves Cry and Drastic Plastic by Be Bop Deluxe.

10. Deleted Scenes
Our version of the pure pop glitter of the alternative ’80s – The Cure, Strawberry Switchblade, Voice of the Beehive, The Bangles. A fantasy – a folly of desire + fear – the possibility of self destruction – drunk on hatred + love. Again, opposites colliding, trying to make sense together.

11. Late Day Peaks
My wife came back from an exhibition of Gwen John’s paintings with a copy of Sue Hubbard’s God’s Little Artist – a biography in verse that traces the life of the painter. The book made me appreciate finding joy in the smallest things. The song is an autumnal goodbye to the past – a recognition of place + time – the precious nature of interior life – the golden glow of doing nothing.

12. One Man Militia
The cold analysis of self-delusion – the shame of self censorship – the self-indulgent nature of art – the disaster of men. Written on the day of the Queen’s funeral when I locked myself in the studio with (producer) Loz Williams. Later, the three of us summoned the spirit of the Pistol’s No Fun + World Destruction by Lydon/Bambaataa – the constant push to take a side – the impossibly of reasoned debate in the cesspit of digital oblivion.

Critical Thinking is released on January 31.

Find out more HERE